Friday, June 22, 2007

EXCLUSIVE: Brown to Sugar - You're Hired!

Having dismissed the Paddy Ashdown rumour out of hand on Tuesday and therefore not written about it, I'm not about to make that same mistake again, so here's the latest totally unbelievable Brown Cabinet rumour doing the rounds...

In his seemingly never ending quest to prove that he has a distinct lack of talent among his own benches, Gordon Brown is, I can reveal, seriously considering offering Sir Alan Sugar a job in his government. He would be made a Peer and either join Brown's Cabinet or made Skills Czar.

Obviously this proves that Brown wants nothing to do with a culture of celebrity, doesn't it? Yup, no spin at all.

UPDATE: I have just re-read this and it does read a little bit like a spoof. It really isn't. I am assured this really is on the cards!

Alan Sugar ? Not a university dropout, because he didn't go to uni.. whose main 'skill' is being a bully and talking complete unadulterated bollocks-on-stilts ??

A 'skills czar' ?? Crikey, things in this country are much, much worse than I thought.

Mary Portas I could handle - but Sugar ? Does this mean that Piers Moron, Amanda Holdups and Simon Cowell are going to be waiting for the phone to ring ? Simon Hoggart says he is loving this - I can now see why...

I've just heard that Baroness Kim and Baroness Aggy are to be charged with cleaning up public life and that scrawny bogus-PhD shaman is to take charge of national nutrition. Meanwhile the Green Giant is standing by to take over from his cousin Green X Man as traffic czar. John Cooper Clarke is moving on from Sugar Puffs to boss Chris Davies' addict jabbing activity. And in breaking news Charlie from Casualty will take over at Health.

This is an obvious ploy by McBroon to set up his future. When he loses the next election he will get a job with Sir Alan either dismantling Amstrad keyboards or, alternatively, selling those C5 wheelie-bin things in the Portobello Road. Any tycoon in public life will think of his bottom line first and the public interest second.

How exactly would I be rattled? I'd love this to happen as it would prove what I have been saying about Brown all along. Also, Sugar would be a crap Minister. The only people who are rattled are Labour MPs, who are being told they are not good enough to be ministers.

Iain, sorry but what does it matter if he brings in an "outsider." I take it your point is knocking Brown about celebrity. Well if he brings in Sugar as Skills Czar and appoints Irene (a nurse from Huddersfield) to advise on front line NHS matters. Is he cashing in on celebrity or appointing people who might know better than MPs.

I would rather have someone from the "frontline" that someone who has spent all their years in the unreal world that is politics, before becoming an MP, for say ten years, and completely departing any form of reality and then expected to run a department.

Before you start commenting that I am an upset brown supporter, I'm not. Just fed-up with politicans who think that only they (as in other politicans) can run the country and we (the mere electors who put a cross in a ballot box every fiveish years) are idiots.

Imagine if governments appointed the best possible people to run departments....

So the rumours that we will see Gordon Ramsay as minister for DEFRA, Pete Doherty as Minister for Culture, Kate Moss as Minister for Health and Jade Goody as Minister for International Development are untrue?

Brown is giving up the Celebrity Politics. Yeah Right!

Anyway did you hear that Cherie Blair will be fighting the smoking ban. She really doesn't like Gordon.

Ideal new labour materialhe got lucky some time in the past and ever since everything he touches turns to ****He is worth less in both real and relative terms than he was 20 years ago.Unlike Branson who is consistently "lucky"

Why would Sir Alan make a "crap minister"? t the very least he has a record of very competent management. Ids it not usually the Tories who say that we need more people with experience in the real business world running things?

I think we can see why his cabinet "colleagues" were so keen to find somebody to stand against him.

Either he is going to crash & burn while annoying every interest & most voters or he is going to seriously improve British government (or he might improve government & still piss off everybody). God knows we need it & I don't really see Dave being likely to change anything.

Skills Czar for Alan Sugar? Hmmm, rather unlikely! The UK already has a 'Skills Envoy', who is doing the (un-paid) job with lots of energy and enthusiasm: Sir Digby Jones. And, yes, we DO need someone to help encourage employers to raise their game in terms of investment in skills, given where we stand in the league tables and where, more importantly where Sandy Leitch (see 'Leitch Review of Skills' pub. Dec 2006) says we'll be by 2020 if we don't pull our collective fingers out. And last week GB announced that the Chair of the new UK Commission for Employment & Skills (up and running as of April 2008) is to be Sir Mike Rake, outgoing Chair of KPMG and from September Chair of BT. No, the UKCES is not just another quango. Its role - already joining up two NDPBs - is to simplify the skills system and to get it performing much better. Sorry to be a bit serious

You are being harsh Iain if not silly to say that Sugar would make a "crap minister". If anything the evidence points the other way. First, Sugar has built up a billon pound business from scratch. He had no connections. No one to get him a cushy job in central office after university etc. No network of chums from a secretive culinary sect like Cameron. He did it the hard way. That commands a certain amount of respect. (Just as you deserve respect for starting up an internet TV channel.) Second, The Apprentice is pure theatre. Sugar is media savvy and plays to the gallery on it. I bet off camera he is less of a showman. He might not "speak posh" like your colleagues but so what? Most of us don't. Third, he surrounds himself with good people whose judgments he respects. It could in fact be quite interesting if true. The sad thing for the Tories is that Sugar is just the sort of chap that should be in your party. Maggie's favourite minister was of course David Young who was given a peerage when he joined the government from business. I seem to remember he did a pretty reasonable job.

Typical of Brown's total ignorance of the world outside Westminster. He thought ace shagger, exchange control manipulator and offshore trust con artist, G Robinson, was a leading City businesman. Now he rates Alan Sugar a failed owner of Tot Hotspur, major shareholder of third rate electronics co whose wealth arises from property rather than his business acumen. Bet his company benefits from Govt contracts. On the putting green a nasty five footer is known as an Alan Sugar.